Blind Spot

1947. USA. Directed by Robert Gordon. Screenplay by Martin Goldsmith, based on the story by Harry Perowne. With Chester Morris, Constance Dowling, Steven Geray. Taking a break from Columbia’s Boston Blackie series, aging matinee idol Chester Morris stars as a vividly alcoholic author of pulp novels who falls under suspicion when his penny-pinching publisher is murdered by a method described in one of his stories. With a screenplay by Martin Goldsmith, the author of the novel that became Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour, this casually sordid, micro-budgeted noir features some inventive staging by the director Robert Gordon, including a one-shot, subjective camera scene strikingly similar to a famous sequence in Ulmer’s film, as well as a rare sympathetic performance by the professional femme fatale Constance Dowling, whose romantic rejection of the Italian poet Cesare Pavese contributed to his suicide. 73 min.

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